1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods for clustering digital photograph collections.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital cameras are coming into widespread use, and as a result, consumers are amassing increasingly large collections of digital photographs. There is a need for automatic tools to help manage, organize, and browse these collections. While a number of tools now exist for consumer photograph management, the vast majority feature light tables of thumbnails in chronological order. However, users typically group photographs chronologically into clusters based on “event.”
Clustering photographs chronologically based on “event” is equivalent to partitioning the time interval over which the photographs were taken. Selecting boundaries at a single level from a hierarchical set of event boundaries can result in quadratic computational complexity in the number of photographs. As a consequence, processing times can be many seconds or even minutes to partition large photograph collection. This limits the suitability of these methods for interactive applications.